She used to own a sign company in the 1990s but gave it up to become a Realtor in DeKalb during the housing boom. She did well enough that when she moved to Mount Morris she was able to put a $50,000 down payment on a $150,000 house in the small western Ogle County village.

Then the boom went bust. Wright's income plunged, her home values plummeted and she couldn't make her mortgage payments. In one of the great ironies of the Great Recession, precisely because she had so much equity in her house her lender quickly foreclosed because it wouldn't take that big of a loss.

Wright adjusted by getting retrained as a welder. But then that company went out of business. Then she found work in a delicatessen, but she was laid off from that job as well.

The 55-year-old, who turns 56 on Jan. 18, hasn't worked for pay since August, and on Dec. 28 she was one of the more than 750 people locally whose federal unemployment benefits ran out.

"I was practically homeless for a while," said Wright. "I've tried everything I can to find work, but there's just not much out there."

Wright is one of more than 1.3 million Americans who lost the benefits after Congress failed to pass an extension. The federal benefits kick in when state unemployment benefits run out. Without the extension, they reverted back to 26 weeks of assistance.

Democrats in Congress are lobbying to extend the unemployment coverage, which added an additional 36 weeks of benefits. Some Republicans have argued that the program, which costs about $25 billion a year to fund, was a Great Recession emergency act and always meant to be temporary.

According to Democratic congressmen backing another extension, 337 people in Stephenson County, 326 in Ogle and 102 people in Jo Daviess and Carroll counties had their benefits expire on Dec. 28. The benefits average about $300 per week. That means in Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties about $230,000 a week has been sucked out of a local economy. That's a significant drain in a community where the unemployment rates in November were still as high as 9.7 percent in Ogle County and 9.4 percent in Stephenson County. The state jobless rate was 8.3 percent.

Wright said she isn't going to wait around for Congress. She is getting back into the sign business, starting AAA Program Management - aaaprojectmgmt@yahoo.com - to do the site plans, permitting and other assorted paperwork for companies after they've gotten contracts.

"If you've never tried to hang a sign you'd have no idea how difficult it is," Wright said. "I still have a lot of my old contacts from the days I had my own sign company. I think it will work. It's worth giving it a shot."